What She Is
by dorcas
Summary: Gaz had meant to find out, and she did. This is what she is. Creepy amatuer origin story; the Prof. is a human monster.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **If I owned Zim it would still be airing. And with PLOT. Wow that seems like a bad thing written out here.

This be a two-shot.

WHAT SHE FOUND OUT

Gaz Membrane, at four years old, was not any different from what Zim would first encounter upon his landing on Earth. The only distinguishing trait between the two was that the younger Gaz wore her hair down to her butt, in the same wickedly sharp not-quite-meant-for-little-girls style. Same squint; you hardly ever realized she had actual pupils behind those eyelashes (which looked heavy with mascara, but no one had dared to ask). But no GameSlave. That was the one major thing.

No. The GameSlave came later; after.

She was aware she'd been born different from the rest of the humans, but she'd never let it really bother her. Yes, she noticed that whenever she turned a corner and came upon any group of miniture human larva (children) they quickly scattered and made for their homes screaming. She'd always shrugged it off, glad they weren't trying to talk so loudly in her face like Dib was. Constantly showing her pictures of could-be vampires, zombies, and werewolves, that was Dib's job as junior paranormal investigator of the block. He was the only one who didn't scram when she told him to, or beat it when she growled at him to. As her brother, it was to be expected, but it was also grueling for her nerves. For some reason he always forgot what had happened the last time she'd snapped and actually acted on her oath of Doomnation, which as of now was five minutes ago. Currently he'd gotten a smidgen of sense into himself and backed off to his "secret lab"...the attic.

The attic was Dib's special place he never let anyone enter but him. Of course, should the need present itself Gaz could always find a way in, as he had no security, but the thought never crossed her mind. He was a particularly boring older brother and she had a lot of better things to do than help him dissect ghost heads, or something, like eating pizza and drawing demonic piggies.

Her own special place would probably be her bedroom, she guessed, because creativity was too much trouble. The hours spent in there went toward perfecting her security robots. She'd stolen the parts she needed from Proffessor Membrane's lab in the basement because, after all, she could always remind him that he owed it to her. The spray paint (which she was tempted to sniff, but decided against it so she could use the necessary brain cells first) had been courtesy of her preschooler teacher's backpack. She couldn't help it; the woman was just too stupid to notice and her resources were so vast, waiting to be taken advantage of, and after all most humans were born retarded after the 21st century because of all the drug usage and other hereditary STDs passed around. She herself was lucky Proffessor Membrane had been born a freaking genious and thus she had nothing to worry about.

That's what she had thought, anyway, before her first trip to the black room.

Whenever Prof. Membrane was in the house he was under it, conducting experiments. He rarely came up the stairs unless it was time for him to go or time for him to eat frozen pizza. The cooking for the sibling was done by the siblings themselves, though most of the time Dib did the cooking and Gaz did the microwaving. If Prof. Membrane came upstairs with his bag in tow, the last thing out of his mouth before he was out the door was, "Don't go into that black room, kids!"

"Bye!" Dib would shout, hopeful, even while Gaz snorted beside him because he should know by now, the reply. "Love you, Dad! Love you!"

But right after Dib's first "bye" the door would slam and, thanks to his special scientists-only teleporting device, there would be a flash, a crack in the air, and emptyness both in the street and in Gaz's face. Dib would smile and look at her. "Do you think he heard me this time?"

Gaz wouldn't return the smile, or the look. She would walk upstairs and slam her own door, Dib calling after her.

"I bet he did! I bet this time, he did!"

And Gaz would clutch at her heart, marvelling at her brother's naivity. Stupidity. Gullibillity.

At other times, any better times, her robot bunny, her favorite lavender one, the only robot in the room without glaring red eyes when activated or visible fangs, would come and plop into her lap an let itself be squeezed. She was grateful for it; it helped her think without talking and demanded no talking from her either. Neither did the rest of the robots, but this one was just her favorite. It's name was Pai, as in a "pizza pie". She would stroke Pai and think. What was Prof. Membrane concealing in the basement? It was time to find out. This premonition of discovery, negative or positve she didn't know, would come true.

Today. Now.

She rose and dropped the bunny robot so that it bounced on the bed softly. "Stay here, Pai, unless I call for you," she commanded. She was good at commanding. Pai looked up at her with it's programmed dark, jade green eyes, reminding her of a child. It really did act like a kid sometimes, forever absorbing information on humanity. Gaz only wished it could get a better education, as in a different planet. Curling one corner of her mouth up, she bent over and patted it's head softly. "Away from this place, away from humans. You deserve better." She straightened, took a cloaking device from the shelf in case the Proffessor come back early (as in a week early; he was schedualed to be back by the end of the month) and her auburn contacts so that in such an event she wouldn't be scolded for not concealing her true eyes. Last time, he was so angry. She'd rather not bother with such a yelling contest again.

Pai waved silently from the end of the bed as she went out the door. When she came back it would still be there, thought-processes ceased till she spoke, almost like the early 20th century computers' screensavers, only eerie.

Carefully, cautiously she took a steip down the stairs, her head tilted up at the ceiling as if she could imagine Dib strutting around and waving around a ruler serving as a wand. She thought she also heard chanting, but couldn't be sure. In any case it seemed like he was busy and wouldn't be coming downstairs for a while, so she plodded down the rest of the steps confidently. The hallway when you turned right from the end of the stairs was long and bare, as Prof. Membrane had no taste for art and any photos of Bigfoot Dib wanted to put up were eventually taken down and shredded by herself.

At the end of the hallway, there was the door. Black and sleek surface, plus the height, intimidated most people, Gaz excluded. To Dib it was the door of all Doors, a portal to some sort of wonderland filled with instrumants of dissection and reconstruction. To Gaz it was that corner of her universe yet to be explored, not something to be feared but something to be held reverant when the time came. She wanted to see what was inside. She assumed it led underground, like the basement, but unconnected to it.

No use in standing there like a dumb kindergartener waiting for her demise by singing puppets. She reached up and plunged her screwdriver into the knob; it fit because she had made sure it would for this day. When the click was audible she tossed the screwdriver onto the floor, unneeded, and shoved open the doors.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Come on, people. By now you should know: if I owned Invader Zim, it would still be on, and not only would it still be on, but they would grow up whenever there's a timeskip (i. e. "Invasion of Idiot Dog Brain" when Zim has to wait a year or two.) so that they would be in high school by now (then time would kind of, STOP for a while) and as an added bonus, Zim would come up with some sort of ingenious device that would make him shoot up three more feet.

But the hair stays. It makes him look Mexican. XD. Hot Mexicano. With actual brains.

FRAUDULENT...WHAT? I AM NOT

It wasn't Gaz's style to go for the subtle approach. She'd seen enough horror movies to know that the dumb blonds who opened the doors slowly alerted the bad guy by the long creak that came with peeking. Besides, even at her age she wasn't afraid of anything.

She had the advantage, with her older brother upstairs...in the attic...doing stuff...well, it wasn't like he would be any help anyway if he did hear something wrong. Dib just got in the way.

That was why, without hesitation, she slammed the twin doors open boldly and took the necessary eight steps in that her father could clear in two. This four-year-old despised her stubby legs immensly.

The room was dark. Where was the switch? There was no need to search, because with his money Proffessor Membrane could afford lights automatically flickered on upon sensing movement. These ones were old, though, reminding her of the ones in the elementary skool. Despite the dim illumination (sp? Sorry!) Gaz averted her eyes to the floor before she could catch sight of what was on the shelves.

Did she really want to see this?

Yes. She'd already decided this outside the door! A Membrane was always firm.

Gaz looked up. Stepped back. Slapped a hand over her mouth.

The shelves were coated in blood, drowning in blood, blood from a source yet unknown. By now it was dry, but there was a horrible stench lingering. Behind the surface of the blood there were thousands of test tubes, few still complete, hundreds broken, shards of glass scattered along the floor and mingling with papers. The papers themselves were in no particular order, strewn about; Prof. Membrane was not an organized man, but he rarely let his supplies and tools get misused. This room proved otherwise. Some of the blood had leaked from the test tubes, dripped off the shelves and soaked the papers on the floor. Gaz blanched. Where had the blood come from?

She wasn't sure she wanted to know. But now that she was inside the Forbidden Room, she might as well not waste the week or so guarenteed to be father-free. She didn't want Dib to know about this. He would overreact and drag the police over and get the law involved to investigate and see if Prof. Membrane really did all this in the room she stood in now.

Now. She had to know the source of all that blood. Though she hardly knew the man, her father was a scientist; it was his job to help people. Yet here there was so much blood...a quantity this vast couldn't possibly come from one man. Not even Proffessor Membrane himself. Dogs? Mice? Would her father be that cruel? He was supposed to be an environmentalist along with a scientist, trying to get nature back from the little horticulture humanity had been lazy enough to leave untouched.

Only one way to find out. Haltingly, tenuously she stepped forward again, then, disgusted with her own timidity, strode with the longest steps her stubby legs could muster, towards yet another aluminum desk (sorry, I'm not good with metals. Metal is shiny and grey, that's about all I know.). There she stood with her head barely reaching the top of the desk, and realizing this would be a problem, scanned the room for a chair and succeeded in dragging a stool over to the desk and climbing atop it. It felt unstable, and wobbly, but she could at least see the papers. She reached out and brought a random notebook, one that looked important as it had "IMPORTANT" in bubble letters across the top strip, and brought it up close to her face, careful not too close because then the contacts would be affected.

One might think that, because she was only four, Gaz shouldn't even have the slightest interest in books. But Proffesor Membrane was a scientist, and he couldn't have illiterate children in skool. It would make him look bad, look average if they didn't know how to read before preskool. And that was precisely why when Gaz picked the notebook up, her eyes widened with understanding as they roamed down the page.

It read like this:

_Entry 1: Because it seems the President Man has given me permission to do so, I am now permitted to conduct experiments on live subjects as __long as there is no apparant family or people who would realize their loss. The President Man really is a fool, but he is a gullible fool leading this country who __has no suspicions of me and expects me to use this research for the good of humanity. I've had to refrain myself many times from reminding him that humanity __can no longer possibly be rescued from itself. I've long noticed that at the rate it's going, and by this time, the Earth will cease to exist by the end of the thirtieth __century by now. If this were to happen, all life would be put out by steady suffication. There's no way for humans to adapt to this, and even if we do, so would the __plants, which would mean that their make-up would change, which would mean that our own internal systems would have to change._

_But I am straying from the subject. I have just received permission for something so important and all I can do is remind myself of what's sure to happen __when I am not here, unless..._

_I could find a way toward immortality.That is the main reason I'd asked for human experimentation._

_I've already got the formulas ready for it. I've just this evening sent out the machines capable of scanning the area for abandoned people, more specifically __children. Yes, it seems a scandalous thing to do to a child, but they're not really worth anything as orphans, are they? If my machines find them before the __authorities, they will be knocked unconscious and brought here. I have several glass containers where they would be kept while unused. Once they're inside this __lab, they are no longer living, no longer human. So that I will feel no remorse. I cannot mourn experiments._

_Entry 2: The procedures are simple. I draw enough blood from the experiments so that they are entirely drained, dispose of the bodies by soaking them in __acid. Unfortunately the acid doesn't completely melt the bones, so I have to settle with dumping them in boxes and stowing them away in a closet or two. This puts me __on edge whenever someone invites themself over. The blood I pour my formula in. I'm not sure what kind of reaction I'm looking for, though, so I'm at a slight __disadvantage. _

_Luckily the government hasn't asked about where I am getting the subjects for the experiments yet, and this city is populated with many orphans. It's a __cautious business, though. In one case a child awoke before I could sedate it and screamed loudly. It was most annoying, and I feared that nearby people would __hear it, so I had to swipe a scapel I'd used for dissecting a child injected with the formula earlier and simply slashed it's throat. An unfortunate loss. It was healthy __and could have been of use to me._

_Entry 3: This would be my last experiment. Believe it or not, the city is lacking in orphans. This shortage has driven me to using clones of myself instead._

_Of course, the sperm I extracted from myself. The hard part was getting an egg. I used a female subject, an older one of about twelve who luckily for me had a __mature egg already, nearing the fallopian tubes. I extracted the egg and put it in a test tube with the sperm, then when they joined put it in a glass containor I filled it __with necessary nutrients to help the growth process. This one will be male. For simplicity's sake, it will be named Project Dib. I also plan on doing the same but __making a female instead, and with that one inject the formula. Project Gaz will be immortal._

Gaz dropped the book onto the table. She glanced at a door further into the room, the one likely to be filled with the indisposable bones of children of the streets. How many had been drained...?

Dib was an experiment. Dib was a clone. Was that still human? The girl supplying the eggs would have been sedated...a sperm and egg joined, both from humans-- but what kind of human would conduct experiments on ungrown versions of his own kind?

Was she human? She didn't have the evidence yet. She picked up the book again.

_Entry 4: Project Dib was a success. Project Gaz is underway._

_Project Dib appears to normal eyes as a regular human, and I intend to put It under the impression that It is one too, when It is older. Although It does not have __the gift of immortality, because it is too late to inject the formula, It proves that it is possible to raise a test tube human in a container outside of a female human's __body._

_Project Gaz has already been injected with the formula. It may or may not survive. The third unnamed project has gone completely wrong, killing the female __egg donar and itself. It's a shame, but I won't be able to get new human subjects anymore. The President Man has withdrawn his permission because I'd forgotten to __complete the cinnamon roll experiment on time. Honestly, that man is...!_

_Entry 5: Final entry. This is such a short journal, only because I do not do so well at committing to things daily or weekly. It has only been three months __since the first entry, but many things have happened. "Dib" is showing signs of defectivness. Abnormalcy. But I cannot dispose of it because too many people have __caught sight of it and it would be very strange if a baby was suddenly not there anymore. The only thing I can do is attempt to raise it as a human. It will be difficult __to keep my temper in check. And to think, with the "Gaz Project" I will have to do the same, but with a female...!_

_Something positive, though, is that the formula has more or less worked. I've interperated data that shows Gaz will be as a normal human save for increased __strength not accessable to humans. It will stop growth at the age of twenty-five, and as long as nothing interferes (It is vulnerable to death in any form humans are) It __will continue to live forever. Insanity may present itself, but it is a minor setback. It also has to wear contact lenses, as It's eyes are those of a snakes. Yellow and slit._

_I only regret the experiments will have to end so soon. I had so much more planned._

_--end._

Slowly, mechanically, Gaz closed the book and set it down on the desk. She hopped off the stool. She walked past the containers, the ones that had trapped her oblivious mother and countless other unknowing youths. She walked past their blood on the shelves and on the floor, through the stench, and to the door. She pulled it open, stepped into the hallway once again, and shut the door behind her, never once looking back at the desk.

'Project Gaz. "It". Clone. Orphans. Subjects. Experiments. President Man. Lie. Fake. Fraudulent.' She'd known that last word because she'd looked it up in the dictionary and reminded herself to forget it because it would not be used. 'Fraudulent.'

In the attic, a male clone born in a test tube dreamed of becoming a paranormal investigator. 'Forgive me, brother. I've surpassed you once again.'

'Neither of us are human, brother. Neither of us are real.' She began up the stairs to her room and paused with her hand on the stairway. A speckle of blood had gotten itself onto her hand. She raised and licked it subtly. 'Are we insane?'

'Can clones be insane? Can experiments be...?'

Gaz went to her room. She shut the door. Pai responded to the noise and looked at her. Gaz took her contacts off carefully, as if performing a ritual, then flung them to the floor. She didn't want to look in the mirror again, because this time she wouldn't wonder why they were yellow instead of a human color. Pai, sensing distress from her mistress, bounced from the bed and hugged her from behind. Gaz patted the robot's head.

"You can live..." the robot said. "...being fake." 

'How did you know?' Pai nuzzled her hair with her chin. "In a fake world."

Gaz gently set Pai down on the bed and told her to shut off, receiving a last cheerful automatic "Good Night! 'Good Morning' is an oxymoron!" before se slumped into the pillow. Gaz stood in the middle of her room, where it was dark in the morning and darker at midday, scanning for something. Last Christmas Proffessor Membrane had brought her a Gameslave and a game because they were new and figured all children liked video games. When she'd received it, she'd snorted, aware that he didn't know what else to get her because he never looked her direction at home. After Winter Break she'd left it somewhere in her room and forgotten about it.

She found it, sitting on the dresser partially buried under a drawing pad, and pried it out. She looked at the back, which told her what kind of game she would be playing. "Vampire Piggies," it said. She almost smiled. It was sort of a good thing Proffessor Membrane was a complete moron. The light came on when she pushed the right butten, and immediately she began memorizing the other buttons.

With this, she intended to forget.

She didn't know she never would.

-----

_A/N: As you can probably tell, I'm not very good with endings, because I've never really finished a fic. But I finihsed this one! (sorta). I dunno. On one hand it's so __incomplete; there's supposed to be a sequal with them in hiskool (hence the note at the top) and it would be a ZaGr because I just HAVE to have her paired with __somebody, and Zim happens to be my favorite male character of the show. So um, tell me if it wouldn't be worth my time to make a sequal some day._


End file.
